So difficult but look somebody has to try. For us to make any progress we need attempts at this. Package the hardware and software, find a target demographic and go after it. I don't know if there's a mistake in going too broad or not having a tailored OS with a smaller footprint or being the general utility but we only learn through these tests. Good luck Umbrel team!
Umbrel – Personal Cloud
11–20 of 125 posts
Re: Umbrel – Personal Cloud
#12A decade of “personal cloud box” attempts has shown that the hard part isn’t the hardware, it’s the long-term social contract. Synology/WD/My Cloud/etc all eventually hit the same wall: once the company pivots or dies, you’re left with a sealed brick that you don’t fully control, holding the most irreplaceable thing you own: your data. If you’re going to charge an Apple-like premium on commodity mini-PC hardware, you really have to over-communicate what happens if Umbrel-the-company disappears or changes direction: how do I keep using this thing in 5–10 years without your cloud, your app store, your updates?
The interesting opportunity here isn’t selling a fancy N100 box, it’s turning “self-hosted everything” into something your non-technical friend could actually live with. That’s mostly about boring stuff: automatic off-site backup that isn’t tied to one vendor, painless replacement/restore if the hardware dies, and clear guarantees about what runs locally vs phoning home. If Umbrel leans into being forkable and portable across generic hardware, it has a shot at being trusted infrastructure instead of just another pretty NAS that people regret once the marketing site goes dark.
Re: Umbrel – Personal Cloud
#13I'm very pleased that it seems like there is a real movement happening in the self-hosted space. I've been self-hosting for about 6 months and actually started with umbrel because the UI looks so polished, which is comforting for people like me who didn't live in the CL. But there's a reason dev and eng tools always have the CL fallback, the GUI limits customization and hacking. And I hit those limits super fast on Umbrel. Then I moved to dokploy, then coolify, and finally `ssh homelab "cd /opt//stacks/ && docker compose up -d"`, and I couldn't be happier to tinker to my heart's desire.
The biggest upgrade of this movement is privacy & data sovereignty, so I hope it continues growing, and hope Umbrel has success in being a gateway for a lot of selfhost-curious.
Re: Umbrel – Personal Cloud
#14So they say they built umbrelOS from the ground up...
Did they really? I'm guessing this is a BSD of some kind? Or have they actually built their own kernel from scratch? I kinda doubt it, and it was hard to tell, even their GitHub readme.md is just marketing material, not the tech specifics for Devs I'm used to finding there.
Re: Umbrel – Personal Cloud
#15Like frigghome.ai I do not see much interest in these, but they could be an interesting way to bring a homeserver per home, potentially powering a public blockchain for digital identity, (smart)contracts hashed publicly, and a digital currency not owned by anyone in particular with also Liquid Feedback blockchain to construct a new society.
The road is very long, but technically feasible, obviously I expect ferocious push against...
Re: Umbrel – Personal Cloud
#16if you don't have your data when you don't have access to third parties you don't own your data. we should start switching to solutions like this to keep control and freedom you can find their opensource repos here: https://github.com/getumbrel
> you can find their opensource repos here: github.com/getumbrel
Not all Umbrel repos are OSS (and that's okay): https://blog.getumbrel.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about... / https://archive.vn/4M4xO
Re: Umbrel – Personal Cloud
#17> Store your files
On a non-backup "Personal Cloud" that does not even have a RAID 1 for a bit of redundancy? Big no no.
It looks really cool, but I really dislike products that encourage dangerous behaviors, especially to users that might completely be unaware and think about replacing their Apple or Google Cloud with this so called "personal cloud".
Re: Umbrel – Personal Cloud
#18So they say they built umbrelOS from the ground up... Did they really? I'm guessing this is a BSD of some kind? Or have they actually built their own kernel from scratch? I kinda doubt it, and it was hard to tell, even their GitHub readme.md is just marketing material, not the tech specifics for Devs I'm used to finding there.
"If you wish to make an [operating system] from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
Re: Umbrel – Personal Cloud
#19A decade of “personal cloud box” attempts has shown that the hard part isn’t the hardware, it’s the long-term social contract. Synology/WD/My Cloud/etc all eventually hit the same wall: once the company pivots or dies, you’re left with a sealed brick that you don’t fully control, holding the most irreplaceable thing you own: your data. If you’re going to charge an Apple-like premium on commodity mini-PC hardware, you…
this can be solved by adding an external nas - for redundancy - and an opensource application or extension that manages the syncing?
making self hosting more seamless is key, we simply can't trust to be dependent on third parties for access to our own data in the long term
Re: Umbrel – Personal Cloud
#20A decade of “personal cloud box” attempts has shown that the hard part isn’t the hardware, it’s the long-term social contract. Synology/WD/My Cloud/etc all eventually hit the same wall: once the company pivots or dies, you’re left with a sealed brick that you don’t fully control, holding the most irreplaceable thing you own: your data. If you’re going to charge an Apple-like premium on commodity mini-PC hardware, you…
> you’re left with a sealed brick that you don’t fully control
Totally agreed. I had seen umbrel and others in the past but recently decided to just get a 4-bay m.2 ssd enclosure (using RAID 1 for 2 sets of 2), not a NAS (after previously having a Synology NAS). I only want pure file access in a small, quiet form factor and I can have another Mac host and cloud backup. Currently using Tailscale Drive (alpha feature) to share it with devices and working pretty well so far.